


I Found Love (Where It Wasn't Supposed to Be)

by thegrumblingirl



Series: Royal OT3 AUs [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Daud Gets Shot, Daud POV, Daud's miserable but still snarking, Fluff and Angst, Jessamine Kaldwin Lives, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-OT3, another spin-off from assassins don't take sides, the feels are real though, this is either crack played straight or feels infused with silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: Daud was no hero. He did not delude himself to have learnt from all of his mistakes, or to be able to correct any or all of them in the years he had left before the Void took him. But as he looked out over the Wrenhaven one morning just before dawn, he supposed he should be glad. His mistakes, too, had led him here.





	I Found Love (Where It Wasn't Supposed to Be)

**Author's Note:**

> ok so — I had this idea yesterday, I wrote bits of it at work whenever I had a moment, and just finished it; and BASICALLY this is just an excuse for me to have Daud be a berk and almost dying but still funny.
> 
> Jessamine lives, Daud catches the bullet meant for her, everyone's miserable and Emily likes drawing whales.  
> It's very silly in places because I Say So, but the feels, kids. The feels are real.
> 
> Of course I made a playlist: [it's on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/ama_23/playlist/1KT4gzAm76MGSRjAgy0XLO?si=zrYXeBYVTeCXhCuEq6ePOQ).

Daud was no hero. He hadn't intended on catching a bullet for the Empress. He'd seen Attano's powers failing him, and in a second’s decision, he'd made the leap. The shot had gone off the second he'd called upon the Void.

He could have taken the chance and tried to inch close enough to pluck the bullet out of the air. He had no way of knowing if either his mana or his concentration would hold out long enough to do it.

Sometimes, he thought, you’ll find you have no choices left.

So he’d chosen — to turn into the path of the bullet, and hope for the best.

Daud was no hero. When he collapsed at the entrance to the sewers, he didn’t say anything so foolish as, ‘go on without me,’ or ‘get her out of here.’

He just coughed up blood.

When he woke two days later, in an old, dusty bed in an even older and dustier pub, the Empress had the nerve to cry. If he could have turned around in the bed, turned his back on her tears, he would have. But he was in too much damn pain and too damn mortified at having survived that stupid stunt, so he was stuck. Literally. Aidan had dug the bullet out of him, and that was all Daud heard of it. He remembered well enough where it had hit, thank you very much, so he did not need the details. He remembered that Corvo and Misha had dragged him up from his knees, Rinaldo still carrying the Princess, and Thomas falling into step with the Empress. He remembered the taste of blood in his mouth and the world losing colour as the Void drew closer.

He’d not welcomed death, not then and not now; but he remembered thinking, when Corvo laid him down in the boat and curled his fists into Daud’s coat, that it would be a fitting end.

It would have served him right; for what he’d done and for what he’d been about to do. _The right thing_ , what rot. _Saving the Empress_. He’d managed it, for all the good it did him now.

The night after Daud woke, Attano dispatched the High Overseer — branded him a heretic, and Daud took a moment to appreciate poetry in justice before gritting his teeth against the pain each shallow breath afforded him. Attano left him, then, with a nod and, thankfully, no further command to rest. The Whalers did not dare, not even Billie; but the royal family (Void…) had no such scruples and reminded him of his fragile state at every turn. Well, Attano and the Empress did, Daud had not yet seen the Princess. Scared of him, most likely, and he didn’t fault her for it; and her parents probably kept her away.

The worst of it was that Daud’s body _demanded_ rest, and so he slept more than he should like and than he could afford. When he was awake, he griped and barked at everyone who dared come to see him. He still gave the Whalers orders, Billie not his successor _yet_ , and Attano brought reports to read to him.

“Let me have those,” Daud demanded, holding out his hand.

Attano gave him a measured glance. “No.” And went on reading.

Daud ground his teeth.

The Empress read him the addresses she planned on making over the speakers.

“I can read,” he reminded her; and how he thought he’d intimidate an Empress into giving in to his demands, he did not know. Only that he had to.

“I know you can,” she told him. Then: “Should I call the conspiracy a cowardly pack of rats or is that too forward?”

He stared at her.

“Cowards will have to do,” she decided, and made a note of it.

So time went on; and Daud would later — much later — learn that it had taken the Empress and her bodyguard only three more days of Daud bedridden, complaining, and utterly miserable to fall hopelessly in love with him.

By the end of the week, Emily came to visit him. She asked him if he really was an assassin. He was. She asked him why he’d saved her mother. Daud told her if he ever thought of an answer, she’d be the first to know. Emily came back to visit the next day. She brought crayons.

Attano seemed content to know the Princess — his daughter — safe with the Knife of Dunwall when she wasn’t with her parents or Callista, and although Daud suspected it had more to do with the fact that he was still discouraged from moving so much as his big toe than any sort of trust, it was still ridiculous.

Emily, for her part, seemed to think he was _funny_. Daud thought there was something very wrong with this child. Even more so when she drew Dunwall Tower, complete with whales floating in the sky. And stick figures, too, one short and three tall, dressed in white, then black and blue and red.

“That’s you,” she helpfully pointed out to him. Something _very_ wrong, Daud decided.

After two weeks, Daud was ready to return to compensated murder if it only meant he might get the fuck out of bed. He snagged a few of Attano’s reports when the bodyguard wasn’t looking — was talking to Rinaldo at the door — from where he’d left them on Daud’s bedside table and hid them under the covers.

Emily, the filthy snitch, told on him when she found him reading them later. No amount of bribery would deter her — not even Daud offering her fencing lessons as soon as he was on his feet again (never mind that, as soon as the Empress was back in her palace, he planned on leaving Dunwall at the first opportunity; on crutches if need be).

Sokolov arrived a few days later and Daud had never hated the leering bastard more, and let him know it.

 _Corvo_  called him the worst patient he’d ever had to deal with.

“I didn’t know you were moonlighting as a physician, Attano,” Daud barked at him.

He possessed the gall to smile. Daud quickly looked away.

To keep an eye on him, Attano started doing paperwork in his room. One night, Daud dozed off while he was still there, and in the morning, the bodyguard was still asleep on the cot next to his bed. Daud watched him for a moment, until he stirred, and didn’t look away, then, either; letting him know what he thought of the intrusion.

“Morning.”

“Fuck off, Attano.“

“Go back to sleep, Daud.”

Daud did not, and so they were left staring at each other across the room; until Attano cleared his throat and turned on his back.

“Breakfast?”

“Not hungry,” Daud returned, obstinate just for the sake of it.

“It wasn’t a suggestion.”

Daud sighed. “Of course it wasn’t.”

Corvo got up, then, and left the room; returning twenty minutes later with a tray and two dishes.

Daud sighed again.

Was there no peace?

“I think Lurk’s got a thing for the housekeeper,” Rinaldo told him one afternoon.

“Lydia?” Daud was so annoyed, he’d take _gossip_ just to have something to think of that wasn’t the same cycle of strategy and contingencies and _I’m no use to anyone if the Watch kicks down the door tomorrow_.

“No, the quiet one. Cecelia.”

“Here’s to hearts being broken left and right,“ Daud shrugged. Lurk had never betrayed her love of anything but ambition. Daud knew where she came from — what she’d done. He’d never known the name of the girl, and he’d never asked. One dead son of a duke was enough to contend with. He’d taken her in anyway, and whether she intended to repay him with a knife in his back or at his throat was neither here nor there. One day, she would. He only hoped it wouldn’t happen while he was confined to _this_.

“Sir?” Rinaldo asked.

Daud shrugged. He was a miserable bastard, and he knew it well. Didn’t hide it, either.

The Empress suffered his wrath the same as her Protector. Daud’s patience with the Princess was tested severely when he rolled over in bed — he was allowed, now — and found something digging into his hip. It was a crayon.

Daud decided that this had to be what going mad felt like.

He listened as Jessamine made another speech, addressing her city over the jury-rigged speakers and promising the conspiracy that their shadows would catch up with them. Parliament was in an uproar, and Daud would have liked to be on his feet just to watch them scurry around.

The Void inside him, too, was itching for release. In a week, Aidan promised, they could start letting Daud walk around. Jessamine’s eyes were kind when Daud told her so that evening as she sat with him.

“I know you wish your recovery were going faster, but this is the better way,” she told him. “And Corvo will be happy to help you.”

“And I’d be happy if he kept his _pity_ to himself,” Daud snarled. Help him — doing what? Walk beside him, hovering, ready to catch him if his legs and his sense betrayed him? “And if he fancies himself a nursemaid, he should go looking for work at one of the almshouses.”

He looked up, then, and found that the Empress’ eyes had ceased to be kind, and they filled with sorrow instead.

“I know you think you must be cruel,” she said quietly, “and so you are, every day. We take it in stride, and not out of gratitude, Daud, but love.” She fixed him with her gaze. “Corvo feels as I do, and neither of us demand an answer. All we do ask, is for you to overcome your pride and let us _help._ ”

Daud could only stare at her.

At length, she stood, and made for the door. She was almost out of the room when he found his voice.

“It’s not pride,” he rasped.

She waited. He had nothing else to say.

After she left and he was once again blessedly alone, he wondered if he should simply ask Billie to finish the job the Watch had started on him, much as he hated giving those bastards the satisfaction. At least it hadn’t been an Overseer who’d shot him.

 _Love_. Nonsense.

The week after, Daud spent nearly an hour out of bed for the first time in almost a month. Corvo was at his side for all of it — hovering. Encouraging. Talking to him through the pain.

Daud let him, through the shame and all the rest of it. He watched Corvo's hands out of the corner of his eye, watched them twitch and the fingers flex whenever he wavered; but he didn’t touch him. Was he itching to? Daud could not say.

He found himself thinking about it. Thinking about Jessamine, too, and reminded himself that he shouldn’t. He’d been rude, and unkind, in the face of their want to take care of him. He hadn’t wanted their pity; and now it wasn’t supposed to have been that at all?

He’d missed Corvo while he was away on his journey across the Isles; he’d been relieved to see him return safe and just in time. He’d made Jessamine a promise, and while she’d not died for him to keep it; all he could do now was lie around and _wait_. Jessamine had taken the daily duties of overseeing the Whalers off his hands with startling ease.

She should have been just another contract — to protect, this time, not to kill, but a contract nonetheless. But while Corvo had been gone, Daud’s thoughts had strayed to her, alone in that Tower with her daughter and a nest of snakes all around her, just as often. He’d only gone to see her once, but not for lack of dismissing the thought whenever it returned. And now, she sent his assassins out on orders in the same breath as having Lydia heat up some more broth for him.

Had he a conscience, he would have forbidden himself any such ill-gotten _feelings_. Were he a liar, he would forget the way he couldn’t sleep whenever Corvo was out, hunting down the next target on the list.

 _Love?_ She was the Empress. She was beautiful. And then there was Corvo, with his hair and his cheekbones and his aquiline nose that had not been broken in three places (or, in any case, properly reset each time). And together, they had a delightful child. What, precisely, did they want with him?

When Corvo returned from charging Burrows with treason with a few scrapes and bruises, courtesy of Burrows’ last remaining loyal guards, Daud didn’t think before he demanded for him to sit down on the edge of the bed so he could examine the cut on Corvo's cheek himself. Corvo was looking at him with soft eyes the entire time and Daud was a proper idiot, so when he was done and satisfied Corvo wouldn’t die, he kissed him, barely there, on the cheek.

Corvo grinned like someone had just handed him down the moon and stars.

Daud kicked him out.

But of course, Corvo ran to tell Jessamine, and the next day, she pecked Daud on the cheek to say good morning and his life was over. Emily began to talk of moving home, and it took Daud nigh on a week to clock that she meant _for him to come with them_. She drew more pictures, and in one of them it said ‘Dad’ right above either his head or Corvo’s and at this point he was too afraid to ask.

Slowly, he regained his stamina, however, and the weeks before the Empress did return to her throne, Corvo and Daud took up training together. Daud was still far off from fighting strength and it was a mess, but the first time he forced Corvo into a blade lock, he felt _good_. Corvo grinned at him, the idiot, dropping his guard. Daud took a chance and ducked to sweep out his leg, knocking Corvo clean on his ass.

“Cheater,” Corvo grunted, a little winded. Daud, taking a moment to settle himself, smirked.

“Thought you’d had to fight dirty to win the Blade Verbena,” he shot back, then offered Corvo his hand to help him up.

“Oh you heard about that, did you,“ Corvo teased and, once he stood, leaned over to brush his lips against Daud’s temple. “Let Emily tell you for a bedtime story, she loves a tall tale.“

Daud narrowed his eyes at him. “There will be no bedtime stories.”

“That’s what you think.“

Indeed.

Daud was no hero. He did not delude himself to have learnt from all of his mistakes, or to be able to correct any or all of them in the years he had left before the Void took him. But as he looked out over the Wrenhaven one morning just before dawn, Corvo and Jessamine asleep on the bed behind him, he supposed he should be glad. His mistakes, too, had led him here.

**Author's Note:**

> a) Daud is an absolute ass and he can still _get it_. It's just unfair.  
>  b) Corvo and Jess probably lay in bed at night, talking about him.  
> c) Does Daud ever even fucking SMILE in this?? No he doesn't. If he did, Corvo and Jess would have taken their clothes off immediately.  
> d) It is very hot in Germany this week and my brain is melting, pls forgive me.  
> e) Thanks to punch for the image of the final scene set to that song.


End file.
